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Compare And Contrast Stanford Prison Experiment And Abu Ghraib

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Introduction
What happens when good people are put in an evil place? Does humanity overpower evil, or does evil triumph over it? When good people are put in an evil place, the triumphing of evil can be explained through a mix of mob mentality and labeling theory. First, I will discuss the events of the Stanford Prison Experiment, and how it turned good people into bad. Second, I will present the events of Abu Ghraib, and how evil triumphed there as well. Third, I will compare both the Stanford Prison Experiment and the events of Abu Gharib to the Capitol Storming that occurred in January 2021. When good people are put in an evil place, the ideas of labeling theory and mob mentality help to explain why evil triumphs over humanity.
Stanford …show more content…

This experiment consisted of a roaster of students who were enrolled to either act as guards or inmates in an imaginary prison setting. This was to test the behavior of humans when put in a non-restrictive authority position over someone with lesser power through labeling. This experiment was set to last for two weeks, but by the sixth day, the guards had become so abusive to the ‘inmates’ that Zimbardo was forced to end the experiment early. Some of the fake inmates had to leave the experiment even earlier due to the abuse they received. After the experiment, almost all the students who participated as guards felt guilty about their actions. (Genzlinger, 2015) This experiment displayed that when good people are put into a place that holds potential for evil actions, they can be mentally pressured by this freedom and by the actions of their peers to participate in evil …show more content…

Capitol can be compared to the Stanford Prison Experiment and Abu Ghraib in the way that it displays mob mentality and the significance of labeling theory. In all instances, there was a group who strongly identified with a label they were given - “guard”, soldier, and Trump supporter. These labels played slightly different roles on each occasion, but overall, the fact that there was a superior label felt in the group’s identity was the key factor. Furthermore, mob mentality also played a role in all the instances. While the storming of the U.S. Capitol was a different type of mob mentality than the Stanford Prison Experiment and Abu Ghraib, the idea of mob mentality still applies to all the above. For the U.S. Capitol, the mob mentality was on a much larger scale than the other two. But for the Stanford Prison Experiment and Abu Ghraib, the identity of those involved were submitted to the occurrence of mob

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